


Anathema

by WaterWych



Series: The Eager Game [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/F, Hallucinations, Kissing, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:11:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6349474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaterWych/pseuds/WaterWych
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"There was a figure looking back, displaying a mouthful of serrated teeth like organized rows of needles in a sewing basket; its whisper was quiet, a manifestation of phantasmal sound as it leered towards her. 'Don't trust her.'"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anathema

**Author's Note:**

> _Anathema - something or someone that one vehemently dislikes_

There was a figure looking back.

She did not know how long it had been standing there, motionless against a backdrop of shadows and moonlit glass, but when she finally noticed its silent presence, the ocean gem found it strikingly familiar in some sickening way. To her, it was slightly comforting to know that there was another figure lurking around the sullen, empty apartment complex besides herself, one that had an aptitude for gliding across the carpeted floor with soundless and bounding steps when it thought she was not watching it. Where she traversed, it followed, and it was in the bedroom that she witnessed the blurry aforementioned figure framed by the polished glass of the gaping windows.

Peridot had left hours ago, at a time when the sun had just started to deteriorate behind the jungle of steel buildings and neon night club signs when she had been called up abruptly for work, and now, a full moon lingered eerily in the cloudless, light polluted sky. No arrival of her partner, and Lapis had grown increasingly tired of waiting. Her insomnia plagued her mind with restlessness, and it was in her exhausted stupor of lethargy did she settle on the idea that conversing with the figure framed in shadows was a fine idea for yet another night of being left alone in the stagnant atmosphere. Anything to draw her attention away from the hallucinations that constantly danced at the edge of her vision in a macabre waltz, always within sight, but never allowing to be seen.  

Lapis approached the motionless form, her translucent blue eyes left to wander up towards its gaunt face until she realized she did not even know what to make of it. She stopped herself short for the sight that met her halted her inaudible steps, and the words died at her black painted lips. It was a weak and scrawny creature; a thing of pale flesh stretched tight over jutting bones. A walking skeleton. Slowly, the blue-skinned gem blinked, and it, too, flickered its wide and unnerving eyes back at her. The sudden mimicry of movement made Lapis uneasy, and upon clearing her throat, she noticed how her demand sounded more like a weak inquiry.

“What are you doing here?” The creature trained its reflective orbs onto her round face at her abrupt question, and a few moments passed before it finally gathered enough courage to acknowledge her question.

“ _don’t trust her_.” Its whisper was quiet, a manifestation of phantasmal sound as it displayed a mouthful of serrated teeth, all lined up in organized rows like needles in a sewing basket. Lapis, under its uncomfortable gaze, used a delicate finger to curl a snarl of cobalt hair around her fingertip, the same one that possessed an ornate band of handcrafted silver. A nervous quirk she rightfully possessed, the creature followed her on a much slower, deliberate movement, grinning at her a white slash mark of a smile with each passing second she grew nervous. The cerulean eyed gem’s murky orbs narrowed in tiredness and unease as she studied the bony thing before her, one that remained entirely cloaked in shadow despite the steady stream of moonlight shining down upon Lapis’ slender form. Its words had thrown her off, and now she could only act oblivious despite understanding its full implications.

“Don’t trust who?” She played innocently, but instead of following her question as she had hoped, it only smirked at her and scolded in a hushed, grating tone.

“ _insolent brat, do not play naïve with me. We know who you are asking of, so why not just admit it?”_ Lapis did not want to think of such things, and she shook her head against the doubts that threatened to impair her judgement and better thought; living on four hours of sleep a week didn’t aid in her predicament, so the honey whispered words that it so desperately tried to root into her conscious made it difficult for her to remember what was reality and what was fiction. After suffering under its heated gaze, she wanted nothing to do with the dull figure interlocked in a shroud of blackness, but the water gem found it increasingly difficult to dismiss it as something her exhausted mind had devised to replace the loneliness she felt, and instead contemplated whether or not it really was a creature of tangible flesh and smoldering eyes. It was with a tepid reply did Lapis finally speak up and answer after leaving it in a suffocating silence for so long.

“Admit what?” Its reflective orbs of smoldering blue displayed her concerned, bleary eyed expression.

“ _that you cannot trust her. that you are only lying to yourself. We know.”_ Though it attempted to persuade her, the blue skinned gem refused to believe in what it whispered to her in the stale air of the hot bedroom. In response, her slender hands clenched into tight fists, and the bony figure across from her performed the same action; always mocking and infuriating.

“I cannot even think of that!” She jerked her head from side to side in an angry expression of denial, stands of azure tinged hair following after every sharp movement. “Peridot may have been cold to me in the beginning, but she was the only one I could really rely on after my release; the only one who actually _spoke_ to me as if I were a real gem and not some tool to be used!” Her lips, dusted in the pale glow of the silvery moonlight, pulled back into a depiction of a snarl, her sharp teeth bared in a show of exasperation. “I don’t care what you may tell me, but I know she is not going to betray me. We’ve been through too much for me to even think about her turning her back on what we created; she’s too loyal of a gem to do that to anyone.” The creature in the frame only laughed at her display of anger.

“ _oh? so you refuse to consider the real truth? didn’t she take everything from you? slowly strip you of your freedom and tear the wings from your back? you are being kept here, without any freedom of flight. isn’t that what you have always desired,”_ it was closer now, closer than before, and she could swear she felt its cold, piercing breath on her round face, “ _freedom?”_ The anger abruptly burned away until it was nothing more than a deceased flame, leaving her open to an entirely different emotion. Now, panic was blooming inside her chest, because in the furthest depths of her mind, she knew in the smallest of ways it was correct. Freedom had been something she had always desperately wanted, but being caught up in such a relationship tied her down and chained her once more, but only to her heart and mind. Hesitantly, she permitted her submissive gaze upwards, and immediately found herself staring into two deep pits of endless black with the very center reflecting back her own trembling form. A rising terror gripped her, and she pulled her fist back in instinct to destroy the figure that laughed harshly at her dismay. The sound of glass shattering echoed throughout the spacious bedroom.

“Lapis!” Her reverie shattered.

The creature was gone, and like a mask had been removed from her eyes, she saw that she was gazing absentmindedly at a shattered window into the splinters of broken glass, staring into her own dismissive eyes, and her own bony, fragile figure. Shakily, she wavered in place as a wave of relief washed over her, but when she raised a trembling hand to brush back a lock of cobalt hair that had fallen into her translucent eyes, pain shot up through her arm. In her daze, she failed to realize that her name had been uttered until cold unbending digits grabbed at her bloodied hand, forcing her back into bitter reality, and into the piercing lime green eyes she was so familiar with. Her phantasmal heart caught in her throat.

“P-Peridot, what… what are you doing here?” Her words were a jumble of hard syllables, her mind hardly able to create coherent sentences as the scowling technician hastily inspected her hand and forearm with a gentleness most unlike her. Lapis couldn’t explain her dilemma before a burning glare locked onto her wide, sleepless eyes of hazy cerulean.

“What the hell did you think you were doing, Lazuli?” Peridot kept her heavy stare fixed onto her face as she searched those orbs of black-blue for any sensible answer that might be contained deep within her blackened irises, but all she found was guilt and distress. “I didn’t want to come back here just to find you smashing out a window and cutting your hand up to the point where it looks like you deliberately placed it into a shredder. I have too many things to worry about right now, and I do _not_ want you to be one of them.” As she spoke, she worked on leading the shaken water gem towards the kitchen, unused for their lack of not needing to consume nutrients for survival, and sitting her down onto the tiled counter directly to the right of the sink; there, she began to meticulously remove each sliver of reflective glass.

Drawing her free appendage up, Lapis rubbed the side of her face with a bare arm as if she was almost guilty for her actions, and focused her attention onto watching the technician slowly remove each and every piece. Neon blue blood wept from each narrow wound, and her skin burned like fire from the mutilated nerves within her fingers and palm constantly discharging uncomfortable bursts of pain. She gritted her teeth, and if Peridot had noticed her discomfort, she made no acknowledgement. In the silence that past between them, Lapis could only think of the alarming sights she had seen and of the figure – _herself_ – that she had conversed with until the flaxen haired gem cleared her throat for attention.

“Now, please, Lapis, tell me what happened.” Peridot’s tone had softened from before, and the water gem knew at this point that she had calmed down enough to finally relay the horrors that had plagued her. She averted her gaze to the floor at Peridot’s gentle yet firm inquiring, and, with a shuddering breath, gave in.

“I-I don’t… I’m not quite sure what happened, to be honest. I know that I saw something, a figure, and that it… was actually me.” Her chilling words brought the green-skinned gem to attention, and she slowly raised her lime green eyes to focus onto the stressed, tired expression that bloomed across Lapis’ round face. The water gem’s free hand gripped the edge of the counter tightly, knuckles turning a pastel blue with each passing second at the force exerted onto the fragile bone. Her voice trembled as she strained to keep it steady. “A-And it only started when I looked into that window and saw my- “

“-reflection?” The technician finished, and Lapis only nodded sullenly at her single word. It somewhat hurt to know that the gem before her still contained a lot of pain despite the many years, and that she was still dealing with the mental scarring that had come with it. Seeing her in such a state worried Peridot to no avail, and the flaxen haired gem clenched her jaw to keep the spark of emotion from penetrating her mask of indifference as she stood from her bent position and analyzed her lover’s appearance. In her black sleep shorts and white tank top, she never failed to hold an air of grace despite the casualness of the attire, and it took all of Peridot’s will not to lean forward and wrap her up into a tight embrace lest she desire to run her detached personality. She didn’t intervene on Lapis’ motionless behavior, however, until she spotted a shimmering tear roll down the ocean gem’s flushed cheeks.

_Ah, crap, now she’s crying! Gotta fix this fast or else she’ll be depressed for another few days caught up in her memories._

Bringing her arms down, she placed them on both sides of the sobbing iridescent eyed gem and stared her directly in the eye, watching as the tears peppered her cheeks and collected on her chin. At the closeness of the proximity between them, Lapis drew her shaky gaze upwards to come face to face with the technician, and it was through a blurry haze did she see a collection of greens and blacks flicker across her vision when Peridot raised a detached cylindrical digit towards her. Carefully, she wiped away the tears, ushering in a faint shudder that shot up Lapis’ spin at the tenderness of the gesture and a small smirk to touch the flaxen haired gem’s thin lips. Her cold, sterile breath washed over her face as she addressed her.

“Now, Lapis, are you going to keep dwelling on the bad things or are you going to forget about them and focus on the present instead?” She attempted in an uncharacteristically soothing tone, unbending digits rising to cup the side of her face in a gentle action of affection. The movement drew Lapis’ attention away from the sorrow welling up inside of her, and she swiveled her head to lock eyes with the piercing green that invaded her own watery, bloodshot ones. With the water gem in alignment, Peridot failed to hesitate when drawing herself in closer and brushing her lips against Lapis’ black stained pair in a lingering, chaste kiss. Though it aided in soothing the torrents of thoughts and emotions in her addled mind, the cobalt haired gem still couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt that came with even considering how she could have even come up with the idea of leaving Peridot and abandoning their relationship. It was something that remained in her consciousness as the kiss deepened into something far more passionate, and despite wanting to feel elated, all she could feel was angry.

Angry at herself and how she _still_ couldn’t dismiss the feeling of wanderlust; how she kept it buried deep within her mind, and how the worst of her memories continued to resurface in her most vulnerable of moments. It was something she would never dare speak to Peridot despite it going back on the trust the technician placed so highly in her. She would never stop being a bad, selfish gem.

And for all she knew in her delusional moments, Lapis would always be her own anathema.

**Author's Note:**

> So, sorry for the long hiatus! Been really busy with school work, but now things should run a bit more smoothly for a while. Anyway, this is a short story about the mental damage that Lapis suffers from from her imprisonment, and a take on it in my AU. This also involves her deeper, more unconscious thoughts about their relationship within this universe. Hope you guys enjoyed reading despite the sloppiness; this was an experimental wreck that I proudly present.


End file.
